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Working his way though university behind HMV and Music World counters in the mid-’90s, Jon Box was routinely serenaded by customers needing to identify a radio snippet.

“Staff would have to figure out what the song was,” he said. And then they’d reply: “ ‘Oh, it’s really popular, so we’re actually out of stock, because we didn’t anticipate enough,’ or, ‘It’s an older obscure song we’ll have special order,’ ” reminisced Box, who now oversees digital business development at Universal Music Canada.

Such shortcomings have largely evaporated in the decade since the iTunes Music Store launched, giving music lovers worldwide an easy way to discover and purchase music. The online store hits its 10th anniversary this weekend.

“It’s probably the greatest invention that happened in the music industry in 30 years,” said Eric Alper, eOne Music Canada’s director of media relations. “It saved the music industry. iTunes made music important again, because it was omnipresent.”

The online store was also a boon for artists, said Stuart Johnston, president of the Canadian Independent Music Association, whose members include producers, record labels, publicists and recording studios.

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“The beginning of iTunes and subsequent growth over the years has been exceptionally positive for our industry,” he explained. “You can market around the world at the touch of a button, cutting out distribution middlemen and reaching directly to your fans.

“Today, for the majority of our member businesses, up to three quarters of their revenue streams are coming from the digital space, and 90 per cent of those streams are from iTunes.”

There are now more than 500 legal digital stores operating worldwide, but Apple Inc.’s business remains the most successful, with 25 billion songs sold.

iTunes debuted on April 28, 2003, in the U.S (it arrived in Canada 20 months later) with a 200,000-song catalog — now expanded to 26 million tunes — in the wake of record industry battles with illegal downloading sites such as Napster, which were eating into their profits.

“It was a nerve-wracking time,” recalled Box. “We were seeing some pretty good declines, year over year. A lot of people lost their jobs across the entire industry in that period.”

Consumers were hungry for a legitimate way to access music, said McMaster University marketing professor Manish Kacker.

“Selling individual songs at a reasonable price made a big difference in terms of iTunes being successful,” he said. “If they had gone in only offering albums, the problem of illegal file-sharing would continue to be prominent.”

At 99 cents per song, with a free 30-second preview, consumers were able to pick and choose tracks, leading to the resurgence of pop singles and even changing the way albums are sequenced, said Alper.

“We started frontloading the album with singles, so that the first one to four songs, in most cases, were the best songs on the album,” he explained. Before that, “an album of 12 or 16 songs was like a concert, where you’re taking them on a little bit of a journey.”

iTunes also introduced savvy marketing initiatives such as pre-orders, which often came with bonus tracks; Complete My Album, which gave consumers credit for singles purchased if they later bought the album; and a free Single of the Week download, which Box credits for exploding the careers of artists such as K’Naan, Florence + The Machine and Lana Del Rey.

“I’ve never seen a retail program break artists as strongly as that one,” he said. “HMV and others had listening posts, or albums were (advertised) in a flyer with a sharp price point, but this was a game changer.”

Unlike the prominent display space firms could purchase in bricks-and-mortar stores (before they began to shutter amidst the ongoing decrease in physical music sales), record companies have no control over the coveted Single of the Week slot, which is curated by iTunes staff Box describes as “former record company people, or former media execs, or former talent buyers . . . very passionate and knowledgeable music fans.”

As with the price points dictated by Apple — although more popular songs go for $1.29 and some classic tracks are just 69 cents — the Single program is yet another example of how the once all-powerful record giants have had to bend to iTunes.

Although last year the global recorded music sector marked the first year of growth since 1999, the business is still challenged by online piracy and the less-lucrative revenues that come from digital music sales. Industry-backed online music services, such as Puretracks and Pressplay, never gained widespread support.

“If the five major studios had banded together themselves and come up with this platform, they would not have to deal with paying the margins they pay to Apple . . . but one should not underestimate the value that Apple brought to the table in terms of its technological expertise,” said Kacker.

“There was a clear incentive for Apple to put a much better service in place, because they stood to benefit from the effects on the sales of their hardware.”

He believes consumers and performers were better served by a digital store created outside the industry.

“A big part of iTunes’ success is the fact that it has made it possible for artists and smaller labels to distribute their music to consumers,” Kacker said. “If this platform had been developed by the studios themselves, that might not have happened.”

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